The family members of Durango city councilors should not serve on municipal boards and councilors should not publicly endorse La Plata Electric Association board candidates, the city’s Board of Ethics advised Wednesday.
“It creates a sense of impropriety,” said board member Mike Todt.
The board reasoned that while both actions may not violate the mandatory standards in the city’s ethics policy, both may lead to the appearance of a conflict of interest. These were the first advisory opinions issued by the new board created in October 2014.
Board member Chuck Owens was the sole dissenting vote against both opinions. He said he believed the actions would violate the ethics policy by creating the appearance of impropriety. The city’s ethics code calls on councilors to avoid the appearance of impropriety because it can be as “corrosive of public confidence as actual impropriety.”
Councilors Dick White and Sweetie Marbury submitted questions on the topics based on their experiences and asking for the board’s advisory opinion because the board solicited questions, Marbury said.
Normally, a councilor or city official would ask for an advisory opinion before taking action, but these opinions can be used to guide councilors in the future.
Marbury asked in July about writing letters to the editor concerning LPEA candidates after her letter about Britt Bassett was published in May.
The board advised against writing letters to endorse specific LPEA candidates because the city has a franchise agreement with the utility that legally binds the organization in certain ways.
Marbury told the board she disagreed with the opinion because she had not included her title in the letter to avoid abusing her position. She simply wanted to express her opinion as a citizen, she said. “I didn’t give up my First Amendment rights to be on City Council,” she said.
White submitted a two-part question in August referencing his own experience when his wife, Faye Schrater, served briefly on the Board of Ethics and whether family members of councilors should serve on boards generally.
Schrater stepped down in March shortly before an anonymous source told The Durango Herald about her service on the board during White’s bid for re-election.
White said he would have posed the question to the Ethics Board before Schrater volunteered for it if the board had been formed. He told the board he did not believe he or his wife had behaved inappropriately when she applied and briefly served on the board.
Schrater was highly qualified for the position, had participated in writing the ethics code and she was one of only four applicants to apply for the five-person board, he said. White also did not participate in naming his wife to the board. But he told them he supported the board’s position.
“You’re trying to avoid the appearance of nepotism, and I wholeheartedly support that,” he said.
In its opinion, the board reasoned that preventing people related to councilors from serving on city advisory boards could encourage others to serve on the boards.
“More citizens will come forward if convinced that the governing bodies uphold the highest ethical standards,” the opinion said.
It took the board several months to address the ethical questions because it meets only every other month and neither question was pressing, said Mary Beth Miles, assistant to the city manager.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
